packed with congealed clay. The wall ran a consistent fifty yards from the front of the building proper, but in the rear, where the architecture of the manor was more irregular, the wall moved considerably closer, in spots no more than ten feet away.
The grounds, once clearly immaculate and groomed, were a ruin. Hedges crushed, statuary toppled, grass trampled and slashed. One stretch of wall barreled through the remains of a topiary garden; odd bits of the animals' spiny bodies extruded from the base as if severed by a train. A child's playground had been equally mangled, smashed toys scattered about. A weathered hobbyhorse lay where it had fallen in a pile of sand, its painted exertions a parody of rictus.
Ground-floor windows had been barricaded from inside the house, curtains drawn around planks, tables, unhinged doors that had been randomly employed. Some windows were bro-
ken, glass fallen to the inside. Every door they tried was locked and immovable.
'Let's try the stables,' said Sparks.
They crossed to and entered the freestanding stable on the far side of the graveled drive. No like effort had been made to secure it; the door stood open. Saddles and gear lined the shelves and pegs of the tack room. The grooms' quarters were neat and tidy: beds made, personal effects filling the drawers and bed stands. A half-eaten kidney pie sat on a plate on the table in the common room, beside it a teapot and cup of cold tea. The orderliness of the place in the shadow of such monstrous chaos felt deeply unsettling. Sparks eased open a creaking door that led directly to the stables proper. The barn appeared empty.
'Listen, Doyle,' Sparks said quietly. 'What do you hear?'
After a moment. 'Nothing.'
Sparks nodded. 'In a stable.'
'No flies,' said Doyle, realizing what was missing.
'Nor birds outside, either.'
They moved down the center, opening the stall doors one after the other. All were empty, but in some the ripe memory of horses lingered.
'They set most of them free early on,' said Sparks.
'Must've used some to pull in the wood, don't you think?'
'The drays, yes. They let them go once they had the logs they needed. But there have been horses boarded in at least three of these stalls since the wall was finished.'
The last door wouldn't budge. Sparks silently indicated his intentions. Doyle nodded, took the rapier from him, and raised his pistol. Sparks took two steps back, whirled, and kicked the door full force. It flew open with a loud crack. Inside the stall a body lay on its stomach in the straw, its left leg jutting out from the knee at an impossible angle.
'Easy, Doyle, he's well past causing us harm.'
'Must've had his foot against the door,' said Doyle, lowering the gun.
They stepped cautiously in toward the body. It wore high boots, breeches, a shirt and waistcoat, the working costume of a footman.
'What's this then?' asked Sparks, pointing to the floor.
Straw throughout the stall was clotted with thick trails of a
dried, murky secretion: shiny, almost phosphorescent, laid down in a rambling, crazy-quilt pattern. From the body, the trails separated and led up and over the walls. It emitted no odor, but something about the silvery hue and oleaginous composition of the substance prompted one's gorge to tumble.
'No smell from the body, either,' said Doyle. 'It hasn't decomposed.'
Sparks looked at him with comprehending curiosity. They knelt beside the corpse. Its clothes shone, polished and glossy, coated with the same strange residue. They put their hands under it and turned the body over; it was shockingly weightless, almost entirely devoid of mass, and then they saw why: The face was mummified, only the barest netting of flesh covering the bones. The eye sockets were empty, shrunken, the hands as delicately skeletal as a dried flower buried in the pages of a family Bible.
'Ever seen the like?' asked Sparks.
'Not in a body that's been dead less than twenty years,' Doyle replied, examining it more closely. 'As if it's been preserved. Mummified.'
'Had the life sucked right from his bones.'
Sparks squeezed one of its clutched fists in his hand; it collapsed into a thousand dusty fragments, like a broken filigree of frozen lace.
'What could have done this?' Doyle said quietly.
A form moved behind them outside the stall.
'What is it, Barry?' Sparks said, without turning around.
'Some'fin' you ought have a look at out here.'
They left the stall and followed Barry outside. He pointed to the rooftop of the manor. A thin ribbon of smoke issued from the tallest chimney.
'Started 'bout five minutes ago,' Barry said.
'Someone's alive in there,' said Doyle.
'Good. Let's ring the bell and announce ourselves.'
'Do you think that's wise, Jack?'
'We've come all this way. Don't want to disappoint our host.'
'But we don't know who's in there, do we?'
'Only one way to find out,' answered Sparks, striding purposefully toward the house.
'But the doors and windows are all obstructed.' 'That won't prove much of an obstacle to Barry.' Sparks snapped his fingers. With a tip of the hat, Barry ran ahead and without skipping a beat leapt onto the front of the house, grabbed purchase for hand and foot in the margins between bricks, and scampered up to the second floor with the ease of a spider on a web. Pulling a jemmy stick from his coat, within seconds he persuaded a window to yield, pushed it open, and poured himself through to the interior.
Doyle was fraught with anxiety at what horror might be lying in wait for the little man. Sparks calmly pulled a cheroot from his jacket, struck a match with his thumbnail, and lit the smoke, all the while keeping a cool eye on the entrance. 'Just be a moment now,' Sparks said. They heard movement on the other side of the door, the ragged scratch of heavy weight being dragged across a tiled floor, then a lock disengaging. A moment later, Barry opened the front door, and they entered Topping.
Tables and chairs had been stacked and jumbled against the door, which Barry now had the good sense to lock again behind them. Loose paper and rubbish littered the great hall. A decorative suit of armor lay defeated and broken on the black-and-white tile. With no daylight penetrating the occluded windows, the air was close with a heavy and oppressive gloom. Glimpses into vast public rooms opening out on either side of the entry revealed no substantial abuses, only disarray and neglect.
'Yes, I'd say the party is definitely off,' said Sparks, casually flicking away an ash.
'There's a gent upstairs in 'a hall,' Barry said unobtrusively, pointing to the grand staircase before them. 'What was he doing?' asked Doyle. 'Looked like 'e was polishing the silver.' Sparks and Doyle looked at each other. 'Why don't you have a look around down here, Barry,' Sparks said as he started up the stairs two at a time.
Barry nodded and moved off into an adjoining room. Doyle found himself standing alone at the bottom of the
stairs.
'What about me?' Doyle asked.
'Wouldn't fancy walking these halls by myself,' answered
Sparks, as he reached the top. 'No telling what one might bump into.'
Sparks waited as Doyle ran up to join him. They moved into an intersection with a rambling hall that zigzagged off in both directions. Closed pairs of opposite doors lined the walls. There was no less light, but the air of menace was palpably thicker. Moving to the left, they turned the first corner and came across a thick white line of some granular substance poured across the width of the hall; Sparks knelt down and wet a finger, dabbed, sniffed, and then tasted it.
'Salt,' he said.
'Salt?'
